"Out of this World" at the British Library

The British Library is currently hosting an exhibition of Science Fiction entitled Out of this World — running until the 25th of September; discovered via a re-tweet by Neil Gaiman — so in an attempt to fool people into thinking I do something with my life I went along to take a look.

First impressions were poor. There was a talking heads video looping just within the entrance — but audible pretty much throughout the space — which was both unnecessary and distracting. (I'm of the general opinion that authors should be read and not heard.) The space itself is best described as crepuscular. I'm not sure if the low lighting was necessary — there were some old manuscripts on display and I don't even pretend to play an ancient documents expert on the internet — but the lack of illumination became a problem in the furthest corners. I wouldn't complain about the interactive exhibitions — such as the 'design an alien' thing — if only they'd actually served their purpose and kept the kids out from under foot.

As far as the content went, the exhibition's subtitle — Science Fiction but not as you know it — tells you what to expect: if you're an actual SF fan, you won't be surprised to see the whole gamut of the genre, from Swiftian tales of fabulous lands to literary SF by the likes of P.D. James and Kazuo Ishiguro, covered. There are some interesting finds — particularly in the form of early works in languages other than English — but generally it came across as a non-SF fan's idea of surprising SF. ("Some of these books don't have space ships in them! Who knew?")

There were also a couple of what were, to my mind at least, odd choices. Sure, the whole "what counts as SF" debate continues to rumble on, so you may disagree here, but including Gaiman's (without question excellent) Sandman, even in the section on dream states, seems a bit of a stretch. And then there was yonder blue box. I must admit I somehow managed to walk past it at least once before realising what it was. (In my defence, it was kinda awkwardly situated.) Does a TV show have a place in an exhibition on literary SF? Especially one which appears to want to highlight something other than the mainstream? (Oh, sod, it. Why the hell not? I'm always as happy as the next nerd to see the TARDIS. Plus, there was also a steampunk K9 — this one, I think — made of wood and brass and win.)

So is it worth going to see? In general — and at the price: free — I'd say, "yes". If you strike it lucky and get there when the kids are elsewhere and there are just a smattering of idiots to get in your way, you'll find a lot of interesting items. The original manuscript pages from, among others, Arthur Clarke and J.G. Ballard, complete with corrections in the authors' own hand, are well worth viewing on their own. (I does make me wonder, however, what current authors will be leaving for future exhibitions. In one hundred years time, will crowds gather to view the actual genuine thumb drive China Miéville had biked to his publisher?) I was also pleased to see that both Iain Banks' Culture and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy were given case space.

Final verdict? Take a quick spin around, then buy the accompanying book by Mike Ashley (£16.95 from the gift shop) to enjoy from the comfort of your favourite reading chair.

"The Endless Sleep"

So here we have my homage to Raymond Chandler, with a little bit of H.P. Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. I know what you're thinking: "that's an awful lot of casual, era-authentic racism to squeeze into one story" — but I think I've managed it.

(And I've also started putting the links to the story before the spoiler-tastic discussion. Go me! It's almost a shame that no one ever reads these posts.)

• Read at Bounded by Infinity
• Read and review at Writer's Cafe

So I hope you're all familiar with The Big Sleep, and the little piece of attendant lore concerning the death of Owen Taylor, the Sternwood's chauffeur. The story goes that the writers working on the screenplay adaptation — including Leigh "I'm the reason Empire is the best film in the trilogy" Brackett — wrote to Chandler, asking for confirmation as to who killed Taylor. Chandler thought about it for a while and then wrote back that, to be honest, he wasn't quite sure himself.

I'd been wanting to tackle this mystery for five or six years, but it was only at the end of last year that how to tackle it — with the Lovecraftian angle — occurred to me. I'll admit that my main inspiration there came from Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, which does something similar, introducing Sherlock Holmes to the Great Old Ones.

I hope I've managed to give the narrator something of a Chaldler-esque voice without straying to far into pastiche or parody. It runs pretty close at the beginning, but I think I reined it in by the end.

I also hope that you all found the startling reveal at the end as enjoyable to read as I found it to write.

My Year So Far

It's almost June and so far this year I have released exactly one app which I have worked on end-to-end. That app is My Royal Wedding. Yeah. It's been that kind of a year so far.

"It Coulda Woulda Shoulda Been a Wonderful Life"

Despite the title, this didn't turn out to have much in common with It's a Wonderful Life beyond the broad theme. Which just goes to show what happens when you don't plan what you're going to write before you sit down and start typing. There are many directions in which you can take the 'suicidal person looks back on their life' idea, and I'm sure it won't be long before I try out some of the others.

This story also contains a couple of references which probably won't age very well at all.

• Read at Bounded by Infinity
• Read and review at Writer's Cafe

"Of Mice and Men and Midnight"

I wanted to write something Gaiman-esque. (Chicks dig Gaiman, right?) So here is a slight spin on a classic fairy tale.

• Read at Bounded by Infinity
• Read and review at Writer's Cafe

"A Rather Commonplace Debut"

The title comes from The Picture of Dorian Gray, spoken by Lord Arthur on the occasion of Dorian falling in love with an actress. The choice of title, the rough theme, and the line "You cried yourself to sleep last night. It broke my heart" came together ten or so years ago. The multiple layers of framing narrative coalesced maybe five or six years ago — after I'd lived in London for a little while and grown to love walking the streets of the City, especially during the deserted weekends. But I'm ashamed to say that the similarities between Dorian's picture and the posters of Tess didn't occur to me until very recently, after I'd finished the first draft.

I'm well aware that to properly tell this story the way I want to is far beyond my current abilities. The multiple tenses employed and the way the narrative flits between them should probably not be attempted by anyone. But at least I can say I tried. I may come back to this story in a few hundred thousand words time and try again.

A Rather Commonplace Debut would also make a great title for a first collection, don't you think?

• Read at Bounded by Infinity
• Read and review at Writer's Cafe

"Unreal City"

I'm really, really not happy with this title, but it was all I could come up with at the time. [EDIT (16/3/2012) This story was originally called Seeing is Believing — like I said, I wasn't happy with the title. This is the "cracking title" I allude to below. And, hey, you can't really go wrong with an Eliot quote, can you?] I think the story as a whole illustrates the problems I currently have with sustaining a structured narrative. Still, I managed to get in a few digs at a former employer, along with the names of a couple of friends (because naming characters is another one of my not strong suits). One day I'd like to revisit the Holmes and Watkins partnership, possibly in something novel-length. I have a cracking title worked out for that one.

• Read at Bounded by Infinity
• Read and review at Writer's Cafe

EDIT (29/5/2011) — To my eternal shame, I've never read Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", so it wasn't until I visited the British Library's Out of this World exhibition that I discovered that it too featured a computer intelligence named HOLMES. How embarrassing. Still, at least we know where whoever named the Home Office system really got its name from.

"The Time Traveller's Companion"

I don't think that there can be much doubt as to the inspiration for this one. I guess there are worse things than being accused of writing fan fiction — Stephen Moffat hasn't done too badly out of it, after all — although that was never my intent. Honest. That's me: misunderstood from the get-go.

• Read at Bounded by Infinity
• Read and review at Writer's Cafe

Author's Note

I like the meta. Stuff about stuff, about how it works, how and — even better — why it was created, fascinates me. I prefer the mythology to the making of. I'm not really interested in how, technically, a certain shot was achieved, but I love to hear how wired / juiced / hungover the cast and crew were when they filmed it, who was screwing / not talking to whom. I love Author's Notes and the context they provide. I love reading which celebrity friend the author was staying with when they wrote a particular work. There's something undefinably glamourous about writing done in foreign hotels rooms, in secluded rural retreats, in rehab. Even a simple dateline — say, London, April 1969 — is enough to provide that little frisson of hermeneutics.

Recently, I've been writing more than ever before. Or maybe it's fairer to say that I've been finishing more, managing to get past the first paragraph without giving up in disgust. (Not sure why this is. There's just a chance I may have found my muse.) This leads to another problem (because it wouldn't be me if there wasn't another problem) — getting read.

(Digression: writing which is never read: is it Zen, like the sound of one hand clapping, or are we talking more along the lines of trees falling in a forest with no-one there to hear them? Discuss.)

I've been posting to Writer's Cafe (my profile's here, since you asked), which seems far less tacky and/or filled with emo teenagers (like I can talk…) than any of the alternatives, but is still far from ideal. The main problem seems to be that members are more interested in writing their own stuff than reading and reviewing other peoples'. Which I can understand. I feel the same way. And it turns out that writing constructive reviews is hard (harder than, say, just re-writing that person's piece yourself, which is what I feel like doing most of the time). The fact that the site's review system doesn't allow for any kind of back-and-forth — it doesn't work like a standard blog comment thread, for instance — doesn't help.

(I'm lead to bemoan, once again, how easy those who practice other art forms have it. It only takes seconds to get someone to take a look at a drawing, or listen to some music, while reading, on the other hand, well that takes time and requires concentration and ooh! look! kittens!)

So I'm going to start posting links to things I write here, along with a little bit of background explaining how particular ideas came about, in a vain (double meaning, there) attempt at grabbing a few more eyeballs. Unfortunately, I won't be able to offer much in the way of exotic writing locations. (The early pieces were written while living in a rat-infested garret in Whitechapel, by which I mean a top-floor studio flat occasionally visited by a couple of mice. Boy, I miss those little guys. Best audience I ever had.)

Book Review: The Long Arm of the Templars

What we have here is, basically, the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory. The author takes a semiotic grand tour of which Umberto Eco would be proud and ends up proving that the Knights Templar assassinated JFK and that the Holy Grail is an alien artefact.

(And now you don't have to read the book. You're welcome. But should you still wish to do so, it's available in the iBooks Store, and from Lulu, for 99p.)

For me, the most interesting thing is the author himself. Now no longer with us, the forward to this first English edition hints at a few brief months of fame in Europe at some unspecified date (late 70s? early 80s?), a murky, possibly questionable past, and a mysterious death. I think I'm intrigued enough to do a little digging into Sig. Moretti.

SimCap in the Mac App Store

A few months ago (sorry, I am a neglectful blogger), my iPhone Simulator video capture application, SimCap, was accepted into the Mac App Store. Sales are roughly two to three times what I was seeing before, selling from the company website and taking payment through PayPal. This may be in part due to the small drop in price (from $15 to $9.99), but I suspect the more likely explanation is the increased visibility listing in the App Store brings.

In all, I think that this has been a good move.